


it starts with an earthquake

by impossibletruths



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Apocalypse, Background Relationships, Canon-Typical Violence, Families of Choice, Minor Keyleth/Kashaw Vesh, Minor Vax/Grog, Multi, crladiesweek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-23 16:20:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 13,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10722876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossibletruths/pseuds/impossibletruths
Summary: The world ends on a Thursday, comes crashing down in smoke and fire and ruin. And then it keeps going, and Vox Machina figures out how to make do in the aftermath.an apocalypse au written for cr ladies week





	1. Pike

**Author's Note:**

> a largely self-indulgent post-apocalyptic AU written in part for critical role ladies week. title from "end of the world as we know it" by REM
> 
> day one: pike  
> day two: vex  
> day three: keyleth  
> day four: allura (NPCs, villians & guests)  
> day five: percy & keyleth (platonic relationship)  
> day six: percy/pike/vex (romantic relationship)  
> day seven: vax (free day)  
> epilogue: cassandra

After the world ends, Pike takes up distilling moonshine in the still on the roof.

It’s Percy still, actually, but he cedes it to her with his blessing, spends his time instead in the garage fiddling with whatever’s most broken, a mechanical triage of sorts. And sure, they need a doctor at the end of the world, but there’s a surprising amount of downtime between sewing people’s organs closed and administering antidotes, and if there’s one thing everyone needs after the world ends, it’s a stiff drink.

She’s even started experimenting. Things get slow at the end of the world.

.

When the world ends, Pike packs up the two-room flat she shares with Grog and shoulders Paw Paw’s shotgun and braves the chaos of the streets to hunt down her friends, gathers them one by one.

She finds Keyleth shouting down a man twice her size for looting, spitting angry and all afire, and Grog grabs the man by the back of his shirt and throws him down the street, and Keyleth straightens her eye-peeling floral skirt and talks about manners and doing what’s right and only pays half a mind to the monsters that stalk the street, too occupied with the atrocities of man to care for the apocalyptic beasts.

She finds the twins standing guard over a pair of silver-haired boys who can’t be more than fifteen, helps lead them somewhere they will be safe: with Salda and her children in the penthouse apartment they used to share with Uriel, before the world ended, before the monsters came and the world turned against them. Vex bids them a teary farewell and Pike makes mental notes: here is the quickest alley to run down and here are the rooftops to follow and here is the exit to take, if they need to flee, when they need to flee.

She finds Scanlan holed up in a tavern, windows boarded with wood and stool legs sharpened to stakes, and two pairs of familiar Shorthalt eyes peer through the door when Pike calls out to him. She is not sure if she ought coax him away or leave him with Dranzel and the rest, but he surprises her, bids a dry-eyed farewell to Kaylie and promises to visit, promises to check in, promises to make sure she is safe. And Kaylie swears at him, of course, tells him she can take care of herself, and Dranzel too, and once Scanlan goes, Pike promises she will she will keep a watchful eye, and the girl does not say it but Pike knows her to be grateful.

She finds Percy in the shop, garage door sealed tight and gate bolted shut, compound half fortress and half trap, and it’s the best they’ve got––all they’ve got, really––so they settle in, shoebox loft apartment home to seven of them. They turn the truck in the garage into something more tank than car, line the wall with alarms and improvised weapons, rig the building out back into a shelter, half triage tent and half armory. Pike lugs the still up to the roof, and takes up distilling moonshine.

And here, crammed elbow-to-elbow within the concrete-and-iron fortress of Percy’s garage, they wait out the end of the world.

.

Here’s the thing about the end of the world: it ends, and then it keeps going.

It keeps going, only slow and limping and bruised-broken, and Pike sits up on the roof while Vex keeps guard and Keyleth turns the back lot into a garden and Vax and Grog make trips into the city and Scanlan tries to be everywhere at once and Percy works day and night to keep it up and running, and it all spins on and on and on.

.

It’s Vex’s idea, actually, the moonshine.

“God,” she says, after the world has ended. Not too long afterwards, but long enough. Time matters less now, months and days blurring together, one after the next after the next. But it’s not too long, and Vex slumps down in the narrow kitchen, and Grog stirs instant coffee in a cracked mug and Vax kicks his feet up on the table, and the sun will set soon and with the darkness will come the monsters.

And Vex slumps at the table and says “God, I could use a drink.”

And Percy says, “You know, I think I have a still somewhere.”

And Pike says, “Paw Paw used to make moonshine.”

And the next morning, when the sun rises and the gates are scratched and scarred but they are still alive and there are little spots of green germinating in Keyleth’s garden, Pike lugs the still up to the roof.

.

The first run is the worst.

Vax comes back cut open from rib to hipbone and Grog’s nose is smashed crooked and Vex’s arm is broken and Pike almost freezes up, because she is a doctor and this is what she does and her friends have been her patients before but not like this, not bled-out white and whimpering around the leather of the belt while Pike forces Vex’s arm back into place and afterwards, when they have been triaged–– After that, Pike goes up to the roof and sits with the still and watches the sun creep across the city, turning glass-and-steel buildings to mirages of color and light.

It’s kind of beautiful, the end of the world.

(The next time they go out, while Vax is still bedridden and Vex trapped in cast and sling, Pike goes with them, and they bring back medical supplies enough to stock a hospital, and Pike wishes she were happy with that.)

.

The thing about the end of the world is, eventually you get used to it.

Eventually the air mostly clears, and the hordes retreat for the time being, and the water recedes, and when it’s all said and done the world’s a ghost town, all fluttering power lines and dust-rubble and limping survivors.

And eventually, there are tomatoes and snap peas in Keyleth’s garden and Percy is content enough with the truck and the generators to try his hand as smaller, less necessary things, and Vax’s abdomen heals up and Scanlan makes the trip to visit Kaylie and finds her nursing a black eye and swearing up a storm and thriving.

And eventually, people start showing up, hear word that there is a healer at de Rolo’s garage, if you can get there. And it is hard, it is so very hard, but they do; they come in ones and twos and barter fresh fruit for gauze and hoarded chocolate for repairs, and once someone traded an old bicycle for a gallon of gas. And there is toilet paper for iodine, and news from abroad for maps of the city, and information for hope.

And Pike sends them on their way with a little moonshine, a little something to take the edge off, or to grease the next palm, and asks for nothing in return, because the world may have ended but they have not ended with it, and will not, so long as they look out for each other, so long as they do their small part to keep each other safe.

Things get simple, at the end of the world. Pike can live with that.


	2. Vex

The sniper’s nest on top of the garage is hardly the most comfortable place to nap, but Vex finds herself dozing off up there more and more often these days.

She blames the exhaustion, the late nights creeping through the city and the days divvying up the spoils, and the intermittent visitors who have heard of their little fortress and sought them out among the horror, and she doesn’t begrudge them their visits––especially not when they yield things like canned peaches and fresh ammunition and gossip from the outside world––but there’s something exhausting about the waiting, about knowing that people out there know they are here, knowing where to find them.

It prickles at the back of her neck, as if someone is watching, and so she watches back. Or dozes, as the case may be.

Vax keeps her company now and then, and Pike even more so, sitting next to the distillery she has set up, and Keyleth works in the garden below, and Scanlan sometimes sits out on the front step leading into what used to be the office while Grog play-wrestles with Trinket in the yard, and even Percy emerges from the garage now and then to speak with Keyleth or take a shift on the roof or simply sit and watch the light catch against the skyscrapers, monoliths still standing despite the destruction.

There’s almost a peace to it, when the creatures below retreat and the air clears and they can pretend, for a moment, that the world isn’t ashes and rubble beyond them.

It makes her teeth ache.

.

The end of the world brings out a lot of hidden talents. Vex, for example, is a damn good shot.

It’s not brand new information––she’s always been pro with a rubber band, been able to flick crumpled up bits of paper at her brother from the other side of the room. But there’s a marked difference between classroom pranks and firing a gun into the black of night when creatures from your nightmares swarm through the darkness and, well.

Hidden talents, y’know.

.

The end of the world also brings out a lot of boredom.

It needles at everyone, Vex knows; none of them are much for the homebody life, and to be trapped (and safe, certainly, but trapped) in Percy’s garage wears at them all in their individual ways. Percy retreats to the workshop, works from noon through the early hours of the morning until he collapses from exhaustion, only to rise and do it again. Scanlan gets quiet, grey around the eyes. Grog and Vax poke each other more often, dig into the tender parts of each other as their pranks go sour, and then make up again when they travel at night, coming home with black eyes and bloody smiles and a lightness about them Vex tries not to think too hard about. Keyleth tends a garden, give each and every plant her almost-desperate attention, knows how much they will need the food once supply runs become thin.

And they will. It’s a big city, but there are only so many resources out there, and now that the world has ended it doesn’t seem in much of a hurry to get back together again, and eventually the stragglers will pick this corpse clean, and Vex knows the cycle of nature. It’ll be a hard time––harder than it already is––if they haven’t prepared for the worst.

So, they prepare. And they prepare. And they prepare. And the world spins interminably on.

.

The first time she goes out––Grog and Vax at her back, their destination the corner store three blocks away, in the hopes they might find food there, something to bolster their meagre stores––they are caught off guard, a band of crawlers stumbling across them, and Grog yanks them out by the back of their shirts but not before one snaps Vex’s arm and another tears across Vax’s midriff, and she runs the three blocks back to the compound firing blindly behind her the whole way, one arm dangling uselessly at her side and Vax tossed over Grog’s shoulder, and Pike goes ashen when she stumbles out of bed to find them a bloody mess on the office floor.

Vex spends four weeks recovering, and when she goes out next she hits every single shot she takes, brings down six creatures and does not waste a single bullet, and Keyleth sings her praises for a week and all she can manage is bitter pride.

.

Dog ownership turns out to be a little tricky at the end of the world. But it was tricky before the end of the world too, when it was her and Vax in their tiny apartment, whose one selling point was that it was within walking distance of work and they allowed dogs, and so she put up with the shitty wifi and the intermittent power outages and the obnoxiously loud neighbors, and––

Well, now at least Trinket’s got a yard, and Grog to play with, and he can lick Scanlan as much as he likes, to the man’s dismay.

Sometimes he comes out with them too, keeps his nose low to the ground and watches their backs, and. Unexpected talents and all that. He makes a good guard dog.

Vex is mostly just relieved he made it here with her. She’s not sure what she’d do without him. She tries not to think about it.

That’s how they deal with a lot of stuff, at the end of the world.

.

Pike’s moonshine is surprisingly good.

Now and then––not often, but every now and then––they have time to sit back, relax, to cram together into the tiny kitchen and swill the stuff around in Percy’s “good” glasses, the nice ones his sister sent for Christmas.

Last Christmas, of course. Before the world ended, before Cassandra retreated into their family home in the country along with half the neighborhood, before she became the leader of something halfway between a refugee camp and a military base. She sent word three days ago, sent a letter with a pair of beekeepers from outside the city looking for their cousin, and they came with a jar of honey and word of Whitestone’s survival, and Percy has been light ever since, relief bleeding off him, and that is why they are celebrating tonight, why they are trusting Percy’s inventions to watch the doors and walls while they get shit faced, because even at the end of the world they deserve a night to get absolutely hammered.

So they do.

Scanlan spends the evening recounting outrageous tales of his youth, and Pike starts a betting pool about what’s true and what isn’t, and they barter pocket change and chores and laugh and sing and drink and for a little while, for this silvered moment in time, crammed into the kitchen with Pike’s moonshine flowing easy and going down sharp and strong, it doesn’t matter that the world has ended because they’re still here, they haven’t ended with it, and that’s enough, isn’t it? That’s got to be enough.

.

“Do you think they come from somewhere?” Vex asks her brother as they sit side by side on the roof, feet dangling over empty air, sunset turning the city burnished silver. “Do you think there’s a reason this happened when it did?”

“You think it’s fate?”

Vex hums around her thoughts, weighing them before she answers.

“I don’t know about fate,” she admits. “I just–– was it always going to be like this? Or did we do something, did people––” 

“Nah,” he interrupts. “Nah, it wasn’t us. Or, maybe it was, but it’s happened, hasn’t it? Can’t go back and change it.”

“Maybe we should have tried harder before.”

He frowns at her. “You really think?”

“No.” No, she doesn’t, but. But but but. Lots of time for doubt, after the end of the world. 

And then an idea comes, and she says, “What if we try now?”

Vax stares at her, solemn as though he already knows what she’s going to say, and asks, “Try what?”

“Fixing it. Figuring it out. There has to be a reason for all of this. There has to be something we can do, besides sitting here and waiting for this to end, because it won’t ever end, will it? And I don’t just want to survive. I mean I do, but.”

“But there’s gotta be more than just that.”

She bites her lip, nods. “Yeah.”

And Vax, because he is Vax, her best friend and other half, doesn’t even stop to consider it. “Alright, Stubby. Yeah. Between you and Freddie McGoth over there I bet we can figure something out.”

“Really?”

“Well, the rest of us might help,” he shrugs, and she elbows him in the side. “Ow! Yes, really.” He smiles. “I was getting kind of bored too.”

She laughs and drags him into a hug, and he leans into her side, and the sun at their back throws their shadows across the yard, an indistinguishable dark blob against the concrete of the compound wall, and the world has ended and the days blur together as they creep past but sometimes, sitting out on the roof, surrounded by her dearest friends, well.

There are worse ways to weather the end of the world.


	3. Keyleth

Dad always said they were going to ruin the world one of these days, but Keyleth’s pretty sure this isn’t what he meant. More pollution and corporate greed, fewer unholy creatures of nightmare and shadow.

(The earthquakes and floods were probably about what he was imagining, at least. There’s a sick sense of vindication about that, that the hippies and environmentalists were right, sort of.)

Sometimes Keyleth wonders how Ashari Inc. fared, if everyone survived. If anyone survived.

On the good days, she’s sure they must have.

There aren’t too many good days, after the end of the world.

.

The thing about the end of the world is, it doesn’t really end.

Oh, sure, civilization crumbles around them and societal structures break down and monsters from Revelations roam the streets. And yeah, the earth trembles and the seas rise and creatures lurk in the dark, and she doesn’t know if her friends and family are still alive. But.

The trees keep growing. Flowers bloom. Squirrels perch upon the wall and chitter at them and birds nest in the scraggly trees poking up from the cracked sidewalk. Weeds creep over crumbled ruins. The world ends, but life doesn’t.

She barters away an old shawl for half a dozen packets of seeds and turns the scrubby yard out back into a garden. The boys bring her a surprise present one afternoon in mid-April, a truck full of mulch and trowels and seeds and stakes, and it comes together in bits and pieces. She fills buckets from the pump in the corner and feels momentarily giddy, like a woman out of time, a pioneer in the great wide somewhere.

But she is not, and this is their life now, all elbows and wanting and waiting, and Grog and Vax pick fights over everything and Pike and Vex squirrel themselves away on the roof, alone except when Percy ventures out of his work to join them, and Scanlan flits to and fro and never stays still for long, and Keyleth has a little dirt and a few seeds and time. Has nothing but time.

So she tends her garden, puts all her fear and anger and worry and hope there, and waits for it to sprout, and waits for them to bloom with it.

.

She goes out with the group sometimes, and the state of the city sets a fire in her belly.

How could this happen, she thinks as they pick over the rubble that was once buildings, water-stained and ruined. How could it end up like this, she wonders as they fight off creatures with intelligent eyes, and finally those twelve years of martial arts come in handy, that dancer’s grace proves useful. What have they fucked up so terribly that this is the outcome, because this cannot be natural, cannot be of the earth. The world is not so cruel.

She’s never been one for faith, not in One Great Being or Fate or anything so human as that. The natural word plays by its own rules, always has and always will.

But there is nothing natural about this.

No, she thinks, driving a staff under the chin of something bestial without name while Vex fires methodically at her side, hits with each shot. No, they did this to themselves.

.

Vex broaches the idea early one morning, after Grog and Scanlan and Pike have returned with news from Kaylie and toilet paper.

The end of the world really puts things into perspective.

“I think,” says Vex as she disarms, and Trinket licks Scanlan head to toe, “that if we can figure out why, we can do something about it.”

“About the end of the world?” snorts Scanlan, shoving the dog away. “Seems like a tall order.”

“At least we’ll have tried,” says Vax, delving right into the crux of the matter, and the room goes silent around him. Early morning sunlight creeps through the window.

For a thief, Keyleth thinks idly to herself, he has an uncanny tendency to run into things head on.

“I’ll help,” she volunteers into the quiet. “However I can.”

Gratefulness flashes across Vex’s face, and she nods. “If we can get you samples–– I mean, I know it’s not a lot to go off of, but––”

“And I can speak to the survivors,” Pike adds. “They all have stories. Maybe if we get enough––”

“We’ll be able to put something together,” Percy finishes. “Maybe not everything, but enough.”

“You think?” Grog asks, dubious, and they hesitate around him.

“Yeah,” Keyleth decides. “Yeah, if we know what they are–– I think that could do good. Or, well. It won’t hurt, at least?”

Grog considers that, and shrugs. “Alright. Yeah. I’m in too.”

“You’re all crazy,” sighs Scanlan. “So where do we start?”

.

They sleep in shifts, at the end of the world.

Mostly, it’s because Percy’s bedroom is approximately the size of a closet and there’s not enough room for everyone. Plus, there are watches to keep, and runs to make, and work to be done, always work to be done. So they sleep in twos and threes, and in their waking hours they wander the tiny compound like ghosts.

Keyleth prefers the early shifts. She wakes hours before sunrise, so whoever has been working through the night––Percy, usually, and Pike, and Vex, when she is not out on patrol––might finally rest. She stands on the roof, in the cold and damp of the pre-dawn and stares at the purple-grey haze of the city, all shadows and waiting.

She watches the sun rise. The world has ended, but life has not. The planet still turns. The plants still grow. Every day a little more. It’s something her mother showed her, a long time ago, when she still had a mother to show her things like that. Each day, a little taller, a little stronger, so long as even one person takes the time to care.

Well, here she is. End of the world. Perhaps there is not much left to care about now, but she cares. More than anything, she cares.

Percy joins her after sunrise, brings her instant coffee scrounged from the gas station down the road, and the city lights up with the morning, sun reflecting off steel and glass like fire, and for a few minute they sit together and breathe it in, before he disappears into his work, because there is always more work to do.

Still. Some things are beautiful about the end of the world.

.

There is always work to do, and there is even more of it once their hunt begins. They bring back samples if and when they can, bone and blood and descriptions, and Keyleth pours over them with Percy at her side. Pike helps too, brings food and listens to survivors speak of what they saw and where and when, and slowly, slowly the pieces of the puzzle start to coalesce.

The picture they paint sits heavy in her stomach, runs through her mind in the small hours of the morning, follows her around in wake and sleep until she cannot ignore the truth of it.

Maybe Dad was right. Maybe they did ruin the world themselves.

.

When she is not busy with the garden––and she is often busy with the garden, even when the garden does not need her, because it is something to do, because she can dig her hands in the soil and tie creeping vines to staves in the ground and lose herself in the familiarity of it all––she works with Pike.

The survivors stumble through in small groups, few and far between and at any hour of the day or night. They come bloody and tear-streaked and starving, and Pike sews up their wounds while Keyleth brews salves, old recipes passed down from her mother, and her mother’s mother. Medicine goes fast, at the end of the world. They must make do with what they have.

Afterwards, Pike sits exhausted on the linoleum floor, brown-dry blood between her knuckles and hair pulling free of its braid, and Keyleth sits with her, and they do not say anything at all.

.

The local branch of Ashari Inc. operates out of a winding complex outside of town. It’s a foolish trip to make, but the world has ended, and has continued, and Pike distills moonshine on the roof and Vex paces with the tight-wound energy of a caged beast and Keyleth must know the truth, with her father’s words and warnings running around her head, and––

Well, when Grog says he’s willing to go, she jumps at the chance. The twins come too, and Percy, and Scanlan, and Pike smiles with tired eyes and promises to wait for them to come back.

They take the truck, go in the dead of night, when the city is stillest, though that means little when the monsters keep no schedule and strike when chance wills it, day or night. But the dark makes for good cover. The rumble of the engine is faint, even in the quiet, and they crouch in the bed while Vax and Grog sit in the front, and no ones dares breathe.

They find the place in ruins, burned from within, and in the wreckage their are answers, almost, the final few pieces of this puzzle, and Keyleth gathers singed files with shaking fury and tears down her cheeks and only Grog dares stay with her as she works, slow and methodical and burning with rage.

Dad always said they were going to ruin the world one of these days.

Well. He was right.


	4. Allura

In an ironic twist of fate, she’s on duty when the world ends. 

She’s sitting behind a desk halfway across the continent, counting down the hours until she can return home, and then, bam. End of the world. The saxons blare and the earth rolls like the sea and the whole building shuts down, every grate and door sealed shut, and Drake swears a blue streak while the skeleton crew still in the complex after hours panics, and everyone tries to reach Uriel, or Salda, or the council, and fails. 

They fail to reach anyone at all.

When the smoke clears and the lockdown ends and they step out to see what has happened, it’s already too late.

.

The trip home is long, long and quiet, and when she finally sees the city on the horizon, glowing like fire in the evening light, it’s a hollow sort of victory, the kind no one is left to win. She’d call it pyrrhic, but that is far too romantic for the rubble and ruin that await.

Drake leaves her there. Or perhaps she leaves him; who does the leaving is unclear after the end of the world. Everyone goes in their own direction, heavy with their own heartache. No matter. They part ways, journey taken in silence and ended with it, and she silently hopes to see him again. The guilt weighs upon her far more than the farewell.

She returns home to the ruin of her city under the half-light of the full moon, the once-gleaming capital now a wreck of concrete and steel. She does not see a single living creature as she approaches, does not see anything except blood and rubble and shadow.

It is only then, standing among the stone and dust of her home, alone and bloody and bruised and beaten, that she cries.

.

Drake tells her of Uriel, in the aftermath. They meet again half by accident in the empty shell of a shopping mall, thick with spring growth that has no place here, and her relief to see him alive makes her knees buckle.

“Found him in his car,” Drake tells her while they sit in the water-stained shell of a department store. “Whole thing was crushed, lass. Been there for ages by the looks of things.”

“And the rest of the council?”

“No news.”

Allura considers that. “Salda, then. Is she home?”

“Aye.”

“You will protect her?”

“Aye.”

“Thank you.”

“Watch yourself, girl. And tell me when you find her.”

“If she’s still alive.”

Drake snorts at that. “Oh, she will be. Take more than the end of the world to stop her.”

He’s right, of course. All Allura needs is a little faith. But faith is hard to come by, after the end of the world.

.

Once the world ends, she doesn’t stop moving.

Her home lies in ruins, and Uriel is dead, and she does not know where the rest of the council is, does not know where Kima is, does not know where anyone is.

But she knows what lurks in the dark. She knows––in part, at least; enough––why.

And that keeps her running, keeps her moving forwards, keeps her going even when she’d rather just give up, just lie down and admit defeat.

That and Kima. She cannot give up on Kima.

.

The government district is a sinkhole now, after the end of the world.

It’s a gaping hole, deep and dark, and things move below, things she does not want to think about, things that haunt her waking and sleeping life.

She stands at the edge of the pit, now and then, and stares down at the wreckage, and tries to decide if she is grateful or not that she was away when it fell.

On the bad days, she cannot decide.

.

Summer burns hot. Winter burns cold. The seasons turn and the end of the world becomes commonplace, becomes mundane, and she almost cannot remember the feel of clean skin or the safety of a night’s rest or what it is to walk the city without looking over your shoulder. Now and again she meets fellow survivors, the desperate searching for a way out and the defeated who have made their homes here and the travelers who are only passing through.

Through it all, she searches.

First she is methodical, combing over every haunt old and new, following familiar paths. She nearly loses an arm to the monsters that wander the streets, and nearly loses her head to a gang of survivors after the supplies off her back, but she pours over every place she can think of.

Then, she is haphazard. She retraces her steps, wonders if perhaps they have only just missed each other. She follows her gut and hopes, and hopes, and hopes.

There is little room for hope at the end of the world.

Then she is hapless. She looks half-heartedly, an afterthought in her endless run.

Kima is nowhere to be found.

She searches anyways. She has given up on so much. She cannot give up on this.

.

There’s something beautiful about the end of the world, about the silence. Something eerily peaceful about walking down the empty streets, something quietly calm in the metal shells of cars lining the sides of the road, and the feral cats that watch her as she passes, and the packs of wild dogs that roam, and the broken windows and the destruction and the silence and the emptiness of it all.

Her feet tap hollow on the asphalt as she walks down a street, once-great buildings crooked pillars propped against each other where they line her path, bent-backed sentinels crushed beneath their own weight. They were not meant to hold the sky forever.

She sees few people, these days. There’s a quiet in that too, but it is less peace and more fear. The city has been silenced. The world had been muted. 

In place of the sound and color, everything is grey and afire, and she knows all too well what hunts in these empty streets.

.

She visits Salda, once, because she is in the neighborhood and does not know when she will be there again and still is not quite sure she believes Drake.

She should know better by now than to doubt Drake Thunderbrand.

Salda welcomes her with open arms, brings her to the penthouse where she hides with the children. There are new faces too, young ones Allura does not recognize, and when Salda catches her staring she says, “Not everyone was so lucky as we were.”

Drake slips an extra blanket and a round of ammunition into her bag when he thinks she’s asleep on the couch. She thanks him in the morning with three fresh apples and toys for the children. He will wake to find them by the door, and herself long gone, disappeared into the hungry, twisting ruin of the city.

.

Eventually, she returns home.

She arrives in the early hours of the morning, when the air is still crisp, and finds half of the ivory tower sheered away, white stone spilt across the city block, apartments within open to the elements like honeycomb. She finds the door hanging half off its hinges, lock long-since broken. She takes the stairs slowly, tries to dredge up any emotion besides exhaustion and fails.

Her apartment door remains intact, number pried off but whole and unbroken. There is something almost comical about unlocking your own apartment, after the world has ended.

The door opens with a creaking sigh, and the woman on the other side lowers her shotgun slowly.

“Oh,” says Kima. “Oh, Allie, thank God.”

And Allura falls to her knees and weeps.

(“We did this,” she says later, when they are curled up tight on her musty couch, so close she is not sure where Kima ends and she begins. Kima presses callus-rough hand to the sides of her face.

“We didn’t, Allie.”

“You know as well as I do. We could have stopped this.”

“We couldn’t. How long are you going to keep beating yourself up over something that happened fifteen years ago?”

Allura laces her fingers through Kima’s, and does not reply.)

.

There is little to hope for, after the world ends, and so it is largely shock that greets her at the news that the troublemakers live.

A pair of travelers point back with shaky fingers and the sort of relief born of gaining aid in a helpless world, and she and Kima follow a crooked path to an old garage, thick cement wall around the complex and a door reinforced with steel. The paint has chipped away, but it is a familiar shock of white hair that stands in the open doorway, as though waiting.

“We saw you coming,” says Percival de Rolo evenly. “We thought you were dead.”

“We thought the same,” Allura says, lightheaded with relief, and Kima’s grip around the shotgun tightens bone-white.

“Would you like to come in?” he asks. “We have some things we’d like to talk about.

“Yes,” says Allura. “We have a few things to discuss as well.”

.

Keyleth shows them the files, familiar names and serial numbers printed on ash-smeared paper, and Allura’s vision swims.

She knew, of course. Knew the moment she stepped out of a building halfway across the continent that Thordak played a part in all this, that politics and law and covert operations failed. That she, her team, failed.

But, still. A part of her had hoped. She’s not a praying woman, but she has prayed for that, that she might be wrong, that this would not be what she thought.

She’s tired of being right.

“What does it mean?” Keyleth asks through tears. “This work–– This was supposed to help the world. Not, not do this. Everything I ever did for Ashari, with them, for it to become _this_ ––”

“It is not your fault, Keyleth,” Allura promises her, and Kima stands at her side with her arms crossed tight around her body.

“How isn’t it? How can you say we didn’t do this? We did, Allura! It was us! Me, my family!”

“It was not you,” Allura tells her, voice even, and she is proud of that. “It was us.”

“You?” echoes Grog, and Kima scowls.

“It wasn’t anybody,” she snaps. “We investigated it years ago. We shut that program down. Thordak––”

“Came back,” Allura replies. “I don’t know how, but––”

“But that doesn’t make it your fault, Allie!”

Allura bites back the words on her tongue, clenches her jaw tight until she trusts herself enough to speak.

“There was an organization dealing with dangerous biological and environmental research,” she says calmly, when she can. “We thought we dealt with it. It seems we were wrong.”

“Well then what do we do?” Vex demands. “If you stopped them back then...”

Allura shakes her head. “It wasn’t that simple. We burned a number of resources. And bridges.”

“They needed to be burned,” Kima mutters, scowl across her face.

“They did,” Allura agrees. “But it was no easy task.”

“But you did it,” Keyleth persists.

“Yes.”

“You know how to get rid of these creatures.”

“Yes.”

“Then we have to do it.” Keyleth looks to her friends. “We have to.”

They are all so very young. So very young. Children, civilians. They have no place in this.

But their eyes are hard, and their faces set, and the world has ended, and in this aftermath none of them are still innocent.

“It will not be an easy fight,” Allura cautions. Vax laughs.

“We have been fighting these things for months. Longer. We can hold our own, Secretary Vysoren.”

“You are sure?” she asks, and she looks each of them in the eye, and sees in them the shadows of men and women long gone, and there lies her answer.

Kima meets her eyes from behind them, offers a subtly shrug and a nod, and Allura breathes deep and feels fifteen years younger, uncertain and full of fire and determined to end this on her terms.

“Alright,” she says to them, and their spines straighten and their chins rise, and perhaps this is not so different after all. “If we are to fix this, we had best get started. We have a lot of work to do.”


	5. Percy

 

It’s rather strange, being acquaintances––friends, really––with one of the Secretaries.

Certainly one would not expect it of them, except perhaps himself (with his family’s legacy of service) or Keyleth (given her position as inheritor of her family’s company). But the rest of their little band are not so lucky (or unlucky) to be blessed with blood of any shade of blue.

And yet here they gather in his garage, the world fallen about them, and Allura Vysoren leans against the hood of the truck, graceful as you please, as she sketches for them a story of gunfire and espionage and desperation, as if they did this every day.

Well, it is the end of the world. Any lingering rules of propriety and sense have been cast aside. He ought to be used to it by now.

.

It’s not exactly _pleasant_ , living past the end of the world. But it’s the sort of unpleasantness of cleaning out the fridge, or going into work when you’d rather not, or staying up all night to finish a project. A hold-your-nose-and-get-it-done sort of unpleasantness. An honestly-it-could-be-worse unpleasantness.

“I suppose,” Keyleth says when he mulls it over aloud, lying flat on her back upon the roof and staring up at the scudding clouds. “It’s just not very fair, y’know. It’s not right.”

“I don’t think things like this are supposed to be fair or right.”

“You think we’ll be able to fix it?”

He sights down the scope, tracing the scuttling movement a block away. They’ll be in for it this afternoon, he’s sure, but they’ve repaired the wall since the last attack, and he does believe the new automatic targeting system will hold.

“I certainly hope so,” he replies, setting the butt of the gun down to lean on it, tilting his gaze down to watch Keyleth’s eyes trace the shape of the clouds above. She twists to look at him after a moment, hair spilt autumn-red around her.

“You don’t sound very sure.”

“Should I?”

“No,” she sighs. “I guess not.”

She returns to examining the clouds while he stares out at the city, watches a curling tongue of smoke drift up and shakes his head to himself. Whatever poor sod is out there won’t make it the day, not calling attention like that.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Keyleth murmurs into the relative quiet of the morning. “I mean, I’m not glad–– Well I am, but not that it happened, just that––”

“I know,” he interrupts gently. “Me too.”

Keyleth finds his hand and holds tight, and the rest of his watch passes in silence.

.

There are a hundred and one things to, after Allura arrives. It is a mad scramble, a search for history and plans and hearsay, and survivors too––whispers and rumors become their trade, and Vax leaves regularly and returns with news that they have found old friends, found groups still thriving within the city.

He hears from Cassandra, thank the stars. She sends a letter along saying that she will open her gates to those seeking shelter, and he has never been so proud of his own blood, so thankful that those years of stiff collars and making nice with the upper echelons of society might pave way for this.

Through it all, Keyleth flits from one job to another, helping him work and sitting across from Vex to pour over notes and binding wounds with Pike and sneaking around the city with Vax and Grog. She is determined, it seems, to make up for whatever failure, real or imagined, has led to this.

Sometimes, he catches sight of her and Allura talking late into the night, heads bent close across the kitchen table, and hopes they are finding some sort of peace in their talks. They are so very alike, after all.

Sometimes, he catches Kima watching too, and knows he is not the only one who worries.

.

She isn’t what he expects when he meets her at one of Father’s parties, back when they are young and still awed by the prospect of fame and fortune, back when it is a distant dream instead of the pressing reality. (And back before the world ends, but that is something neither of them expected, and they may be forgiven that lack of foresight.)

He finds her hiding behind a curtain, jealously guarding a plate of hors d’oeuvres and peeking out now and then to stare at the crowded room.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, and she jumps.

“Oh, um. I don’t like crowds.”

“Oh. Me neither.” He looks down at her, knees curled up to her chest and back against the window. Outside the city sparkles against the dark of the night. “May I join you?”

“Um. Sure.” 

He sits next to her, arranging the curtain so that it hides him as well. She offers him a cracker with cheese and a dripping red jam.

“I’m Keyleth,” she says in a stage whisper, all elbows and long limbs and freckles. 

“Percy,” he replies, licking jam off his fingers. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

She smiles like the sun, and he cannot help but be charmed. “You too.”

Many, many years later the world ends, and they find themselves once again huddled together in hiding, curtains drawn tight while they peer out, all elbows and wide eyes.

It’s like they say. The more things change...

.

For all that they need the guidance, there is not room enough at the garage to house another pair of bodies. No matter how hard they try, they are always running into one another, bumping shoulders and getting in the way and on each others nerves, and this cannot last.

Allura and Kima take their leave a week after they arrive, promising to return, promising to do all they can to help in the interim, insofar as they are able to.

Keyleth sees them off, silhouetted in the open gate long after they are gone. Percy brings her a sweater to wrap around her narrow shoulders, and does not try to convince her of anything, guilt or innocence or anything in between.

She hugs him crushing tight, all long limbs and desperation and distant hope, and he holds her just as tight.

They stand like that a long while.

.

Keyleth visits him, now in then.

It is not such a lengthy trek, from the backyard to the garage, but there is something sharp in the delineation. With such little space between them, they lay careful claim to their own little corners of the compound: he gets the garage, Scanlan the office, Vex the roof, Pike her still, Grog the front, Keyleth the back, Vax the armory. Which is not to say they do not pass between them, but. It is a careful dance they perform, here at the end of the world.

Sometimes, though, Keyleth comes to visit, brushes the dirt from her knees and exchanges soil for grease, trowel for wrench. She makes for a good assistant, talkative and quiet by turns, and a quick learner. That is not such a surprise; her study and his may not often align but there are similarities enough in practice, in pursuit.

And he doesn’t mind the company. It’s nice, not being alone at the end of the world.

.

Eventually, there is a plan. It is a haphazard thing, questionable and full of pitfalls, but it is the best they have.

Whoever is running Thordak, Allura tells them, has released this plague of creatures from beneath the center of the city itself, a poison spreading outwards across the land, and only from the center may the end it. A failsafe, Kima calls it. A way to shut it all off, to cut the monsters down in one fell swoop.

“It won’t end this,” she cautions, and Allura presses her lips together across the room. “I mean, we can’t undo this, obviously.”

“But it will give us the change to try again,” Vex says. “We understand.”

“Right. So then.”

It is to be like this: they will enter the complex of bunkers and tunnels beneath the center via the sinkhole, where it has destroyed the entrance and given them openings. They will go in, hit the failsafe, and burn whatever remains to the ground.

It is not a delicate or carefully-thought-out thing, but it is straightforward and sure and easy enough to remember. They will go in teams, from multiple entrances. They will try to meet up.

They will leave each other behind, if need be.

“So they can have a chance,” Keyleth mumbles at his side, too quiet for the rest to hear. “So anyone can have a chance.”

He wraps an arm around her shoulder, and she leans into his side without saying anything more.

“I cannot ask this of you,” Allura says. “This is our mistake––”

“We’re going,” Vax says, and Vex agrees over him, and Pike, and Keyleth, and Grog, and Scanlan, and his heart swells that the people he has found are so stalwart, so willing to do what they must for the good of the world. It is warm, this feeling, this promise of hope.

“It will take some time to set up,” Allura tells them.

“We’ve been waiting for ages,” Vax shrugs. “We can wait a little longer.”

The secretary presses her lips tight together, and Percy sees the same look mirrored on faces around him.

“Thank you,” she says finally. “Thank you for this. It is not your fight, but thank you.”

“It is now,” says Pike, all fire and steel, and his family nods around him.

“Thank you, Allura,” Keyleth says, “for your help.”

“It is you who are helping me,” she replies, but there is something in her face that speaks of sorrow and guilt and acknowledgement, and Percy feels he is intruding, and cannot help but watch.

“Well,” says Grog. “Guess we got stuff to prep, huh?”

“Yes,” Percy agrees. “I had best, ah, get to work.”

“I’ll help,” Keyleth volunteers, and they part ways in ones and twos, each finding their own corners of the building. Vex sees Allura and Kima off again. Grog and Vax spar in the yard. Pike organizes and re-organizes her medical supplies. Scanlan hums along nearby.

And Percy sits in the workshop, fingers stained with grease, while Keyleth sits next to him, his best friend at his side as they prepare to fight back against the end of the world.


	6. Pike 2.0

Percy visits them on the roof, sometimes.

He takes leave of the garage, folds his oil-stained towel on his workbench and climbs two flights of stairs to join them, shirt grimy and hair wild and fingers still dark with grease. He sits between them, between Vex (keeping watch on their surroundings) and Pike (keeping watch on Vex). Sometimes he greets them with a smile or a clever quip. Sometimes he sinks down between them and says little, allows Pike to wipe the stains from his fingers and curl their hands together. Often, Vex greets him with a kiss to the cheek. Sometimes they merely sit, all pressed together.

The details are unimportant. What matters is this: they sit there together, and for a little while the end of the world does not seem quite a terrible thing, not if this can come from it. Not if it means she gets them.

.

She cannot sleep, the night before they are set to leave.

The garage is packed to the gills, the entire compound humming with nervous energy, and she knows she is not the only one awake. Bedding down in the kitchen she hears Keyleth speaking quietly with Kashaw, and now and then Kima’s voice drifts in from the tiny living room, and knowing Grog he and Vax are not sleeping and––

Well. She knows the steading breathing of a dreaming Vex, knows Percy’s loose-limbed sleep, and though their eyes are closed and breathing quiet, neither of them is asleep.

“You don’t have to pretend,” she says softly, and Vex groans into her shoulder.

“Not pretending,” Percy says, arm thrown across both of them. “Trying.”

“Rather a lost cause,” Vex whispers back. Pike wriggles upright.

“I love you guys,” she says, and a sort of desperate panic grabs her as she says it, closes off her throat and swallows her whole, and––

Vex buries her face in her stomach, curling tight around her. “Don’t talk like that.”

“I’m just saying it.”

“It’s appreciated,” Percy assures her quietly, eyes squinting in the gloom. He yelps when Vex kicks him.

“No goodbyes,” she orders. “God knows we’ll get enough of that tomorrow. I just want–– I just want to be us. Just us, for a little. Okay?”

“Okay,” Pike agrees, and Percy murmurs his echo, and Pike leans into his side as he runs his fingers through Vex’s wild hair.

“I am rather lucky, though,” he says. “To know the both of you.”

“You are,” Vex agrees, and Pike laughs, and it loosens something in her chest. Slowly she sinks back into the bed, into them, into their warmth and steadiness. Sleep comes slow and fitful but they are still with her each time she wakes, and for now it is enough.

.

Pike resigned herself long ago the be the one who waits.

She is rarely alone in her vigil, but it cannot help but feel that way at times, as though she is the only one in the shattered remains of this world. She shakes with relief each time they come home, even if it is bleeding and bruised, even if they must sit quietly at her table afterwards so she might flit around them with Keyleth’s homemade medicines and pilfered bandages and disapproving looks that hide a deeper fear.

Vex sees through it first, pulls her aside and tells her, quiet, that she does not carry this burden alone, that she does not need to shoulder the whole of them. That she does not need to hide it.

“Yeah, I do,” Pike tells her with a crooked smile. And Vex merely stares at her, tired and solemn, and understands.

.

As the one who speaks to and for and with survivors most often, Pike gets roped into finding them, recruiting them for this last-chance mission they have concocted. She and Keyleth set out early in the mornings, follow the rumors backwards along well-traveled channels.

Often, they come to nothing, trails gone cold, people long-since moved on. Now and then they find people, but they are frightened and frail and will not fight.

And then comes the surprise, a whisper's mention of a half-familiar description that is more akin to chasing smoke than leads, but they are short on time and allies, and so they look.

She does not expect who they find at the end of it.

It is the white hair that gives them away; only Percy has hair like that, and for a wild moment she thinks it to be him, but it is not, it is––

“Zahra?”

“Keyleth?”

“Kashaw?”

“Pike?!”

And Zahra and Pike watch as Keyleth and Kashaw crash into each other, all wordless relief and desperation, and Pike thinks of Percy, and Vex, and misses them with a yearning, misses the moments they have missed, misses the things she waited too long to say to them.

But regret is an old story, and they fight for the future. It has no place here.

(Keyleth asks a thousand questions, about where they have been and why, if they have been sending people to them, have they not visited themselves?

“It’s personal, princess,” Kashaw says, and he thumbs over dozens of new scars up his arm, and they do not push any further.)

.

There are to be three groups for the infiltration. Kima takes the twins and Scanlan, and they enter from the north, draw an arc around the point Allura has marked on their maps for their approach. Kashaw and Zahra and Keyleth and Percy take another angle, delving deep and attempting to enter from below.

Which leaves Pike and Grog and Allura to flank Kima’s group from the south.

“Do we even know whatever we'll looking for will be there?” Kashaw asks, dubious. Kima shifts her grip on the shotgun.

“Yeah. Trust us, we’ve been keeping tabs.”

"On what?" Kash grumbles.

"Not what," Allura answers. "Who." And she leaves it there.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” says Vax.

"No shit,” Grog rumbles. “So we doing this or what?”

“See you on the other side,” Vex says, her smile faint and forced. Pike’s breath catches in her chest, and for a moment pounding panic seeps through her.

They were not meant for such things as this. They are doctors, bakers, accountants, mechanics, bureaucrats. They are no strike team, no special force, no warriors.

But they are this city’s hope. And Pike well knows the burden of bearing the hope of many.

“See you on the other side,” she echoes, and commits Vex’s face memory, traces the lines of Percy's body, and breathes deep.

They will do this, and they will come back.

They must come back.

.

Even before the world ends, she is a little bit in love with both of them. In love with their teasing and their cleverness and their heart. In love with Percy’s quiet, giddy laughter and Vex’s unbounded-bright smiles. In love with their love.

And then the world ends, and she puts aside such silly thoughts and focuses on surviving. She has their friendship. They are alive. It is enough.

But try as she might, she cannot stop watching, and––

Well. That is a hard thing to hide, when they all live one atop the others. Percy is polite, or perhaps merely clueless. But Vex, sharp-eyed Vex, clever Vex, beautiful talented wonderful Vex, she sees. Oh, yes, she sees quite well.

She brings it up while Pike is on watch, one eye pressed to the scope, searching for the slightest hint of movement.

“Pike,” she says, and Pike hums a response, half-attentive, and Vex says, “Percy and I were wondering if you’d like to join us.”

“Doing what?” she asks, curious as to what new project they have concocted, and she hears the shape of a smile in Vex sigh, but she does not explain further.

When Pike looks to her, both eyebrows are raised. The pieces shift slowly into place, and then click in all at once, and Pike blushes red as the sunset.

“What?” she squeaks, and Vex smiles soft and sure.

“We’ve talked about it a great deal,” she says, and Pike wildly wonders where, and how she has missed that, because there are no secrets among them, not when they live tripping over each other. “And we wanted–– I mean, we hoped you might–– If you’d be interested, I mean––”

“What, just as a–– a thing? Like, just to try...?”

“No!” Vex’s eyes widen, her hair tumbling around her face as she shakes her head. “No, I mean–– _we_  mean––permanently. Or, as long as you’ll have us.”

Her head spins. “Is that... okay?” she asks, and she means _is it allowed_  and _is it not wrong_  and _what will everyone think_. But Vex has little patience for such self-doubt in anyone other than herself (rather, in herself too, and that is why, Pike thinks, she detests it so in others).

“Yes,” she snaps, and if Pike did not know her so well she might be hurt, but instead she feels weightless, shot through with light, and her face still burns but she smiles wide and full.

“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, I’d like to try. As long as you’ll have me.”

And Vex smiles to match hers, blinding bright and full and wonderful, and Pike laughs and laces their fingers together and feels though she might burst.

Some things are beautiful about the end of the world.

.

Allura is right, of course. The complex is right where she has marked, cracked sewers and old maintenance tunnels giving way to a bunker of neat-hewn stone lit with flat, buzzing lights, and each step seems to echo in the silence.

“Where’re the, y'know. The things?” Grog asks when the turn a corner down another long, empty tall, and Allura stills them with a signal, fist clenched in the air.

“The others should have checked in,” she murmurs, half to herself. “I do not like this.”

“The only way to go is forwards,” Pike replies, tamping down her worry. They will be fine. Her friends are talented, resourceful. They have survived so far; they will survive this too.

But they are not soldiers, a small part of herself whispers, and she sets her jaw and swallows down the fear.

“We have to keep going,” she whispers, and Grog nods at her side, and Allura takes a breathe and creeps forwards, hair bound up tight.

Then they turn the next corner, and thoughts of the others fly from Pike’s mind as she sees exactly what they face.

.

They spend a great deal of time waiting, after the world ends. Waiting for supplies, for survivors, for news. Waiting to try Percy’s newest invention, or for their wounds to heal, or for something to change.

There is much to wait for, at the end of the world.

Pike is lucky that she has Percy and Vex, and the rest of their ragged family, to wait with.

.

“It’s alright,” says the dark-haired woman, lab coat fluttering about her knees, creeping black veins spiderwebbing up from the collar of her shirt and across her face. Her voice sounds distorted through the glass of the observation booth, and the beasts pacing between her and them stare with too many eyes, teeth bared. Above them monitors flicker, security feed showing the other two parts of their group in grainy black-and-green footage. “Don’t be rude, come in. They won’t bite. Not yet, anyways. Ah, Secretary Vysoren, I was hoping you would join us.”

“Raishan,” says Allura, and there is no shock in her voice, only anger. “What have you done.”

“Only what I needed to,” Raishan replies with an elegant shrug.

“This is madness.”

Raishan tuts. “Now, that is shortsighted thinking. But you never understood, did you? Perhaps the girl will, once I explain why we needed her father’s work. A pity the company was caught in the crossfire. I’ve always been a supporter of the organization.”

“Keyleth won’t listen to a word you say,” Pike snaps, and the woman spares her the slightest glance.

“Well,” she sighs. “If talking is out of the question, I suppose we’ll just have to get on with things. You’re lucky you got here first, you know.”

“Why’s that?” Grog asks, and Pike clenches her hands tight at her side.

In the booth, Raishan smiles, sharp and sickly.

“Because now you get to watch them die.”

And with a flip of a switch their comms go live again, just as doors open, and they watch on the security screens hanging above them as their friends are set upon by the creatures of the apocalypse, and all they can do is watch.


	7. Vax

His sister has always been the best part of his life, and the end of the world does not change that.

It is, if anything a reminder, a lifeline, a point of bright hope among the darkness and destruction. So long as she is at his side, there is nothing he cannot do. His belief in her could rekindle the fire at the heart of the earth, could near turn back time. He believes enough for the both of them, sees her own doubts and loves her all the harder for it.

The end of the world cannot be such a terrible thing, if she has survived with him.

.

The comms go live a split second before the door at the end of the hall slides open, give him warning enough to grab Vex and dive to the side, and behind them Kima shouts, “Go!”

Vex hesitates, fingers wrapped around his wrist and torn, staring back at the others, cut off by the rising surge of monsters charging towards them. “Kima––”

“We’ll cover you, just get out of here! Go find Allie!”

Scanlan smiles, and it only trembles a little. “Yeah, go on. We’ve got this. You know us, big damn heroes.”

“We’ll come back,” Vex promises.

And they run.

.

They run.

They leave late in the night, backpacks over their shoulders and stockinged feet silent on the stairs, peering through the dark with wide eyes. Only briefly do they hesitate, pulling on their shoes in the shelter of the building’s doorway, staring up at the dark windows of the place they have left, a place that is not home but the closest they’ve had for some time now.

“Are we sure?” Vax asks quietly, and Vex nods, sharp.

“We’ve got to go,” she says. “Vax, we have to.”

“I know. I just––”

“It’ll be alright,” she says. “We’ve got each other. We’ll find Mom. It’ll be okay.”

“As long as you’re here,” he says, and it is a far more soothing truth than he expects. “Okay. Yeah.”

They slip into the night, and do not look back.

.

The echo of Kima’s fight fades to silence as they wind their way through the complex, but the creatures still come. They appear without warning as they are wont to do, materializing around corners and behind open doorways, and though the twins can hold their own they do not have the time to battle their way from here to the central control room.

The vents are Vex’s idea.

He balances on her shoulders to pick at the screws, a not-unfamiliar position for the two; it brings him back to fonder times, dire in other ways, when they worried where they would eat or sleep, not if they would be eaten alive. He has never held particular pride in his past, but there are some bright points among it, the thrill of cracking a particularly tough puzzle or pulling off a job they should not be able to manage themselves.

He never thought thievery would prove a useful skill in his future, but then the world went and ended, and now this familiar routine has saved their lives more than once.

When the grate comes loose he scrambles into the vent, and she leaps up after him. It is a narrow fit, even for them, but they manage, shimmying along towards the control room. They follow the vents as the tunnels grow wider, larger, lead back towards a central point.

With lucky, they will reach it in time.

.

He is a good thief, he knows. Quick, quiet, willing to take risks. But good means cocky, and cocky means, well––

He was going to get caught, sooner or later. It’s an unpleasant eight months behind bars, and she comes in regularly, asks why he did not tell her, why he didn’t ask for her help (because she would have given it, of course, and he cannot ask that of her, not when things are finally looking up).

He gets out, and finds a job, and meets Keyleth, and Percy, and Pike and Grog and Scanlan and the rest of them, and they do not ask where he has been these past few months.

Before, it might have hurt to know she has gone and found others without him. Now, he is merely thankful she has not been left alone. The space between them is rocky, but they will get there. It will take time, but they will get there.

Then, of course, the world ends, and they have nothing but time.

.

They fall upon the central chamber, literally. The vent shifts below them and something snaps up ahead and they come tumbling out in the middle of a pitched battle, and among the chaos and sound it takes a moment to catch their breath.

Allura and Pike and Grog crouch behind a control panel, firing at a pack of horribly deformed monsters on the opposite side of the room, backed into a corner, and a woman with a pulsing, dark infection creeping up her neck watches impassive in an observation booth. Screens above them show grainy security footage of the complex, and it is with relief he sees Kima fighting back-to-back with Scanlan, sees Zahra and Kashaw ducking around a corner, sees Percy and Keyleth standing together.

"Oh, thank God,” Vex murmurs at his side.

Across the room, Allura looks up at their entrance, and her eyes go wide with shock, and then narrow.

“Behind you!” she shouts. “The console, it––”

She cuts herself off as the monsters charge forwards again, and this time two peel from the group and spring towards them, maws gaping. Vex raises her arm and fires twice, cool and steady, and they collapse at their feet, dead before they even hit the floor.

His sister has always been way cooler than him.

They duck as one against the console, picking off creatures as they exchange quick words.

“Vax,” she says.

“I know.”

“It’s right here.” There is something awestruck in her voice, to be so close to ending it.

“You ready?”

“Of course.”

“Love you.”

“Love you too.”

“Well, Stubby. What’re we waiting for?”

.

"Well, Stubby,” he says, feet kicking off the roof, watching the truck rumble back towards them, Grog visible in the back even from here. “Never thought it would end like this, huh?”

“Don’t say that,” she tells him, eyes scanning the horizon. “It’s not the end.”

“Looks a lot like it.”

“Then this is the afterwards.”

“You can’t keep going after the end.”

“Sure you can. You’ve just got to think bigger.”

“I think plenty big.”

The truck rumbles up to the gate and Grog hops out of the back to open it. Vex raises an eyebrow.

“Sure you do.”

“Hey!”

“I’m just saying,” she shrugs. Below, Percy drives the truck into the garage and Grog shuts the gate behind him, turning to greet Trinket as he runs up to the mountain of a man. Pike and Scanlan dash out of the office to welcome them back, and the sound of the motor cuts off and Percy and Keyleth step out a moment later, a little dusty but none the worse for the wear. The whole of their family gathers in the yard below, giddy with relief at another successful run. “We’ve got too much hope for the end of the world.”

“I suppose,” he says, but his heart isn’t in the argument and that rings clear in his voice. Vex grins at him, teasing-bright, and he bumps her shoulder. “Should we go down and meet the victorious heroes?” 

“In a minute,” she says. “I want to watch the sunset first.”

So, they do.

Some things about the end of the world are beautiful.

.

The kill switch is on the other side of the console, and requires careful tinkering to bypass the controls. But his are thief’s hands, steady and sure, and so he stands.

“Watch my back,” he says, and leaps the control board, coming down on the balls of his feet on the other side. He stares down at the mess of buttons and wires, tries to find the system Allura and Kima described, and–– yes, there, blinking yellow.

He pulls his tools from his pocket, and they are familiar like old friends, and he sets his teeth and––

 _Shouts_  as something rips into his chest, branding-hot and strong enough to spin him around, and he catches briefly the sight of the woman in the booth stood in the doorway, pistol raised.

“Sorry,” she says, and her voice is crystal clear over the roar of the fighting. “I can’t let you do that.”

And Vex screams, untamed and fierce. Her gun comes up and it seems the whole world slows, narrows to her and the woman in the coat, and he hears the yelling but it fades away as she lines up the shot, and she––

_never misses, will not miss, not again, not again, not again_

Glass shatters like a waterfall, a thousand sparkling shards pouring down, and the woman stumbles back, red blooming in the center of her shirt, and her gaze makes the slow trip down to the shot in her stomach and up again as Vex’s fingers tighten around the trigger, and her head snaps back, red across the wall behind her, and she falls, strings cut.

The world snaps back, sound and color and speed rushing in around him, and he collapses, blood sticky-hot against his skin, but he still has eyes only for Vex, stares as she turns back to him and kneels at his side, and he cannot hear her over the cacophony around him but her lips form careful words, easily read.

_Hold on._

.

“You ever think we’ll be heroes like Luke Skywalker,” Vax asks, staring up at the ceiling, still in awe, echo of the movie drifting through his mind. He will dream of them tonight, ancient knights with swords of light and righteous princesses and clever scoundrles.

“Better,” says Vex. “Cause we’ll have each other.”

“But Luke’s got Han and Leia.”

“Yeah, but I’ve got you. And that’s better.”

“I suppose,” Vax says, and she crosses her arm and pouts.

“It is. Cause wherever you go, I’ll go, and we’ll never be alone, not ever.”

“Promise?”

“Promise, Vax.”

.

She pulls his toolkit from his grasp and bends low over the console, fingers working quick and careful. He tries to watch but her whole outline seems to blur and shift, fading. His fingers fumble dully for her pistol, cast aside so she might work, and he forces himself to turn so he might watch her back. He need not bother; the trio across the room guns down the roiling mass of creatures without second thought.

“Vex,” he mumbles, copper taste thick on his tongue.

“Stay with me,” she tells him, voice far away.

“’m tryin.”

“Well try harder.”

“You’ll do fine,” he says. “You’re great. Better ‘n me.”

“Tell me about it later.”

“A’ight, Stubby.”

She says something else, something he doesn’t understand, and then something clicks above him and the room goes silent. Then the lights cut out, leave nothing but the glowing red of emergency lighting, and suddenly Vex is right in front of him, worry painted across her face.

“Vax,” she says. “Vax, c’mon. You’re going to be fine.”

Grog is there too, somehow. And Pike, tugging at his shirt, and Allura, and––

“’S it over?”

“Yeah. Yeah, Vax, it’s over.”

“You did it, Stubby.”

“We did it,” she says. “We did it, and you have to stay awake–– C’mon, Pike’s here, just stay awake, Vax, please––”

But her voice is faint, and the darkness spreads, and even her hand in his own seems distant, and he cannot fight the pull, must as he wants to, much as he digs his feet in against it, and––

And there is dark, and then silence, and then nothing.

.

Is is a limping group that returns to the compound, and they pass the empty shells of the beasts the whole way, and Pike does not once cease her care of Vax. Kashaw tends to the others, brusque and efficient as he braces Keyleth’s broken arm and sews Percy’s leg shut again and digs a stray shot out of Kima’s shoulder while Scanlan apologizes profusely.

They lay Vax upon the bed, pale and fever-hot and breathing shallow, and Vex does not leave his side. The others visit her in that time, bring news of survivors appearing from the rubble, of Salda Taldorei re-emerging from isolation to organize the nebulous beginnings of a new government, of Kashaw and Zahra’s momentary farewell while they return to their own group of survivors. Word is sent to Cassandra, they tell her, and Vex is distantly pleased to finally have the chance to meet the woman.

Everyone takes turns sitting vigil with her, offer assurances or conversation or simple companionship. Percy and Pike visit the most, quiet but present, and that alone lends her strength.

“He’ll pull through,” Pike tells her gently, early on, and Vex hopes she is right. “He’s got you. He’ll pull through.”

Vex should know better than to merely hope, for as with most things, Pike is right.

He wakes three days later, tired and weak but alive, and they gather round his bed in this home that bursts at the seams, too small for all of them, and Vex stares at her family, bruised and battered but alive, and the world has ended but it is not over, not yet. They have survived to see this slow dawn.

“Well,” says Pike suddenly with a laugh. “I don’t know about you, but I could really use a drink.”

And there, gathered together and miraculously alive, there is nothing else to do but laugh along with her.


	8. Cassandra

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and an epilogue. thanks for coming along for this wild, seat-of-the-pants ride

They arrive with the cusp of spring, truck rumbling quietly down the cracked remains of the street. From here she makes out easily enough the group of them in the bed of the truck, hair red and white and brown. She watches from the window as Jarett waves them in, their reinforced gate swinging slowly open.

It is still something of a novelty that it no longer hisses and sparks. The electricity goes towards other things now, like stoves and lights, and it is almost an indulgence to turn them on and off at will.

Most days, she does not quite believe it over, but here, coming up the long, curving driveway, is proof that somehow, they have made it.

Thank God.

The truck comes to a stop in front of the house, engine cutting out a moment later, and Cassandra leaves the window as they begin to pile out, hurrying down ancestral halls to greet them. The further she gets the quicker her pace, until she is nearly running across the foyer, feet sliding on the smooth marble, and she yanks the door open with Percy’s hand still raised to knock, stopping face to face with her elder brother.

He looks older. The white of his hair seems less the idle fashion of youth and more settled, as though his hair has aged and his body is now beginning to catch up. He blinks at her behind his spectacles, hairline fracture running through one lens, and there is a still-healing wound at his temple, and he is thinner than she remembers, and he is _alive_.

She swallows down a sob and throws her arms around him and he wraps himself around her in return, and for a moment they are the only two in the whole world, and she is boneless with relief.

Then she remembers herself, and his companions, and pulls back with a quiet cough, fighting down a blush.

“Welcome to Whitestone,” she says, gracious and grateful. “I’m so very glad you’ve come. It’s a little cramped, but––”

“Trust me,” one of the twins interrupts. Vax, she believes. “Anything’s better than your brother’s place.”

“I feel like I ought to be insulted,” her brother says with good-natured cheer, and the other twin––Vex, then––smiles.

“But you know we’re right, darling.”

“Oh, yes, I know.”

Cassandra watches it all distantly, their easy exchange, the familiarity, the comfort. A small part of her is bitter for it. A greater part of her is relieved that he has not been alone.

“Well,” she says, and clasps her hands together as though she might capture their attention between her fingers. From her brother’s letters, they are a rowdy bunch, rarely led and often scattered. “Any friend of my brother is a friend of the family. You are welcome here so long as you wish to stay.”

“Oh, we won’t impose long,” Percy promises with a small, tired smile. “There’s far too much to be done. Now is hardly the time for a vacation. But–– Well.”

They have never been the closest among their siblings, and it is a bitter irony that they are the ones left standing, the boy who ran from the family name and the girl too young to truly understand it.

But the end of the world has a way of putting things in perspective, and though they have never been the closest, they are both de Rolos, know how to read each other in the things they do not say.

And Percy does not say a great deal. Cassandra understands it all.

“Of course,” she says, and she knows from the twist of his lips that he understands too. “Come in, then. There’s plenty to be done.”

From the doorstep one can just barely make out the city, steel and glass buildings a glittering mark in the distance. She notes it now as her brother’s friends troop past, talking and laughing. The redhead takes a running start to slide across the smooth floor, arms windmilling wildly, and the largest of the group catches her as she tumbles, and the rest laugh. Percy lingers at her side, staring at them all as they ooh and ahh over their ancestral home.

“I’m glad you’re alright,” she tells him softly.

“Yes. I am too,” he says with his usual distracted air, and she had not realized how much she missed it. “I’m glad we all are.”

“How long will you stay?”

“Oh, only a few days I should think. Not long.”

“And then?”

“I’m not sure,” he says, watching the group vanish down the hall, and Cassandra turns back to tug the doors shut. The city glints in the distance, sun small and bright in the clear sky, and the air smells like spring, cool and fresh.

“Percy!” one of them calls back from the direction of the kitchen. “I didn’t know your sister made moonshine too!”

Cassandra raises an eyebrow. “Something you want to tell me, brother?”

“Oh, everything,” he says. “I suppose we’ll have to find the time.”

“I think we can manage.”

He looks to her, eyes guarded behind his glasses; he has always been overfond of masks. “It will be better,” he says, and it is half a question. Cassandra tucks her arm through his with a sigh, all relief and fondness. 

“Of course,” she replies. “It’s the end of the end of the world, isn’t it?”

“Something like that,” he allows, and he folds his hand over hers in the crook of his elbow, and together they follow the group deeper into the house.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr at [teammompike](http://teammompike.tumblr.com)


End file.
